If I Can't Move Heaven
by silmarills
Summary: Growing up in the system, Alice Potter never had a real home. Unaware of her magical heritage, she's plunged into Harry's world on her sixteenth birthday. Trying to survive a pit of vipers is hard. It's even harder when one has to juggle OWL's and private lessons with the Prince of Slytherin as her tutor. Being the twin sister of a Chosen One is not all it's cracked up to be.


**July, 1996**

Her sixteenth birthday was, without a doubt, the worst birthday Alice Potter ever had. And that included the time when her foster parents had forgotten her in the Chuck E. Cheese's parking lot.

She couldn't say what made it the worst. Perhaps it was the thin, braided blanket that smelled of mold, or the dying air conditioning that sputtered weakly against the Arizona heat. Or maybe it was the moans, the thumping of the headboard against the wall and squeaking of cheap bed springs next door.

Alice flung the sticky plastic-cased pillow across the dark room and shimmied the musty coverlet down her legs. She was sweaty. Itchy.

Mrs. Wilkinson snored loudly in the bed next to hers, a big-breasted, chain-smoking social worker, with the stiffest perms she'd ever seen. She had been assigned to Alice after her eighth birthday, when yet another family decided she was too difficult, too mouthy, too strange, with all of the inexplicable cases of bad luck befalling everyone around the teenager.

Her belly rumpled. Great, she'd probably gotten a food poisoning from the greasy, rubber-like chicken empanadas she'd wolfed down at the motel's restaurant, earlier. She rolled over, almost tumbling off the small brass bed as she checked the clock for the fifth time in five minutes.

 _0:06._ Alice groaned.

There was no way she'd sleep, not when the fan over her head made those distressed screeching noises as it cut through the stale air.

 _Scr-scree Scr-scree. Scr-scree._

 _That's it_ , she thought. Swinging her legs over the side of the bed, she fumbled her way across the room, where she'd dumped her backpack.

Pulling out a pair of baggy jeans and a washed out AC/DC shirt, which she'd stolen from one of her foster brothers, she tiptoed to the bathroom— a slice of space that smelled sharply of chemicals and cigarette smoke.

So that's why her caseworker had locked herself in the bathroom earlier, Alice though and pressed the switch. The lights flickered. Hands gripping the cracked washbasin, she splashed her face with water from the faucet, trying to avoid looking at the stained mirror.

She was a mess. Her ginger hair was stringy and stuck up at the back of her head in a poor imitation of David Bowie's hair in _Labyrinth_ , her skin looked pasty—sweat pooling in the dip of her chin—and her green eyes were puffy from not having slept in two days.

Two more birthdays and she'd be free from foster care, the constant moving. Free of dingy trailer parks and parents who didn't care and swung at her with beer bottles. She'd saved up some money from her job at a local car wash. Stuffed in a sock at the bottom of her backpack. It wasn't much, not nearly enough to pay for college.

Alice pulled the shirt over her head. It was a few sizes to big on her, hanging from her body like a second flapping skin. Stuffing the room's keycard into her back pocket, she left the bathroom and slunk out onto the dimly-lit parking lot.

 _El Rancho Motel-Vacancy_ read the neon sign.A group of truck drivers were smoking on a fire escape. If they saw her they ignored her as she shuffled toward the reception building in search of a vending machine. She needed the sugar high.

After eleven years, Mrs. Wilkinson had probably memorized her entire file by now, though Alice doubted that the social worker would acknowledge her birthday, let alone buy her a cake. No one had ever done that for her.

The TV mounted to the wall behind the reception desk was on. Some middle-aged blonde housewife with pearly white teeth praising a vacuum cleaner like rent was due on Monday. _Double the suction capacity for half the price._ Rolling her eyes, Alice made for the vending machine in the corner of the reception hall. She punched the 13 into the keypad and watched as the machine swallowed her coin greedily. Then nothing happened.

"You've got to be fucking kidding me," Alice whined, giving the machine an encouraging kick with her sleazy trainer. "Come on." Nothing. _Shit._

The infomercial got interrupted by the news. She listened with half an ear as the anchor reported on the bridge collapse in downtown London on Saturday. Thirteen dead, hundreds injured. Next was the President playing golf on Hawaii.

"Happy fucking birthday to me." With a last kick at the vending machine, Alice turned back toward the parking lot and— snagged her foot on something that stuck out behind the desk.

She frowned, reaching for it in the dark. Was that jeans? What the fuck, a leg?

Alice swallowed a scream. The receptionist was sprawled on the floor, a twenty-something woman, stiff and unmoving. _Amy_ was written on the name tag on her blouse.

"Hello? Are you alright?" She shook the woman, feeling for a pulse, but there was only cold flesh and stiff limbs. "Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god," Alice babbled.

How had the woman died? A stroke, perhaps There was no blood, no sign of struggle. The papers on her desk were piled in neat stacks, nothing out of order. What was she doing? Wasn't she supposed to call an ambulance, the police? Right. But what if it was a murder. Worse, if the murderer was still around somewhere?

Fear twisted her insides into a tight coil.

Despite herself, Alice burst outside, trainers dragged on the hot asphalt as she ran back to the motel room. Mrs. Wilkinson would know what to do. She rounded a truck and her breath caught.

A bright green light, like an explosion of fireworks, blazed high in the night sky over the motel. It looked like a bleeding wound. Gaping at it as it hovered there like a humongous insect, she realized that it was shaped like a skull, a snake slithering from its mouth in a parody of a tongue.

Her feet moved without conscious thought. Then, she was banging at the door. "Mrs. Wilkinson! Open up. Please, please open up."

Silence.

Her fingers shook. Slick with cold sweat, they slipped on the keycard as she tried to insert it into the slot. "Dammit." She crashed through the opening door, a silver square of moonlight falling into the room.

"Mrs. Wilkinson? Are you asleep?" Her heart slammed against the bars of her ribcage as she peeled the sheets from the social worker's face. The woman's protruding frog-like eyes were open, staring at the ceiling without actually seeing.

Alice recoiled with a small shriek, her hands pressed over her mouth as if to squeeze the scream back down her throat.

A moment later, she heard the shrill wail of police sirens.

The coffee at the police station tasted like crap.

Alice's mouth felt like something fuzzy had crawled inside and died there. Her head pounded, her ears rung for no apparent reason other than that she was barely clinging to consciousness.

An officer had confiscated her backpack and emptied its contents on the table, dubiously eying her toothbrush as if it were a murderer's weapon. Finding nothing incriminating about hand-me-down clothes and wrinkly boy band posters, he'd left her alone soon after.

Twenty minutes later, a balding man had entered the interrogation room with her file clasped in his sweaty armpit.

He'd introduced himself as Sheriff Barns and put a plastic cup onto the small table, pushing it toward her with a lenient, good-cop-smile. Sheriff Barns had a fatherly look about him— portly with a bushy mustache and a brown uniform that stretched precariously over his bulging middle.

Her criminal record was short for someone who'd grown up on the bad side of town. Some minor offenses like juvenile shoplifting and reckless driving. Then he'd started to question her.

The coroners were confounded over the cause of death for Mrs. Wilkinson and the young receptionist. Both of them had been perfectly healthy. There was no explanation for their death, much less for the green, skull-shaped scar in the sky.

Alice was in the middle of describing her walk from the motel room to the reception, for the fourteenth time, when the door to the interrogation room swung open.

Sheriff Burns rounded on the intruder, clearly annoyed. "I told you not to disturb—" He broke off, shoulders slumping, his eyes staring dazedly at the tall woman in the doorway.

Alice blinked blankly. There was no way an adult was wearing a pointed periwinkle blue hat and sweeping velvet robes in July.

The woman seemed to be in her late forties. She had cream-colored hair, which she'd pulled into a tight chignon at the nape of her neck and bones that seemed to be too close to the surface of her skin. She held a wooden stick confidently aloft— a knitting needle, perhaps.

"Miss Potter, I've come to retrieve you," she said in a curt New Yorker accent. She stepped into the room, flicking her knitting needle in direction of Sheriff Burns in a businesslike manner.

He flopped to the floor, dead, Alice thought, until she heard a snore that rivaled Mrs. Wilkinson.

"Do close your mouth, deary."

Alice snapped her mouth shut, head spinning. "What the fu—"

"Language. Vulgarity is very unbecoming on a young lady, and certainly no substitute for conversation." The woman nudged the sheriff with the tip of the boot he was nuzzling with his cheek. She sighed. "Poor man. He will wake up in about half an hour. We'll be long gone by then."

Alice had backed into a corner of the interrogation room. "I don't understand. How did you—"

"— do that? What a nonsensical question! Magic, of course," the woman said as if she were discussing something perfectly ordinary like baseball or the weather. She stepped over the sleeping Sheriff Burns, as if he were part of the furniture, and reached for Alice, who shrank further into the wall.

"Now give me your hand, dear. Come on, we don't have all night. The spell is going to wear off soon."

Alice shook her head. "I'll do no such thing. Are you crazy? You can't just go around knocking out federal officers with knitting needles. Who even are you?"

"Oh, Circe, how rude of me." She pocketed her knitting needle in the swaths of her robe. "My name is Evangelina Galardi, President of the Magical Congress of the United States of America. A pleasure to finally speak to you in person. I've heard so much about you."

Alice frowned suspiciously. "What do you mean you 'heard about me'? How do you even know who I am?" For now, she'd repress the part about magical congresses and presidents for the sake of her sanity. _Let my subconsciousness put up with that,_ she thought.

Mrs. Galardi made a dismissive hand gesture. "We've had our Aurors watch over you for years. They alerted us immediately when they sighted the Dark Mark. Happy Birthday, by the way."

"But— but," the sixteen-year-old sputtered. She folded into herself as if to conserve space. It was too much, too fast. "Why do you have me followed by bodyguards? I'm not a freaking celebrity. And don't come at me with the _the-government-cares-about-cases-like-you-bullshit_. I know for myself how much those pricks care. Not. A. Fucking. Bit."

Mrs. Galardi's mouth pinched into a severe line. "How much do you know about your parents, Miss Potter?"

"That they're both dead," Alice said with a shrug. "Their names. That they were British. Unemployed. The place of birth on my birth certificate was London. No one knows why I ended up in the American foster care system, though."

"A grave oversight on the MACUSA's part," Mrs. Galardi sighed. "Unfortunately, when we became aware of your existence, you were already too old to attend Ilvermorny. But know that You-Know-Who has returned…."

"Who?"

The little bit of color in the older woman's face turned to a sickly-looking shade of green. She looked momentarily shaken, her confidence faltering for a second.

"I don't think this is the right place to speak of such things. If there even is one."

"Riiiight, very ominous. Look, I'm just going to say it. Is this the part where you're telling me that I am the long lost daughter of some reclusive billionaire playboy or something?" Alice crossed her arms in front of her chest.

Sheriff Burns grunted in his sleep, rousing.

"Your questions have to wait for now," Mrs. Galardi said, back to her no-nonsense self. "We have to hurry. Take my hand, child."

She didn't wait for an answer, grabbing Alice's hand in her dry, papery one and pulling her into the center of the room.

"Where are you taking me?" Alice asked, confused as to why they were just standing there.

"You're coming home, Miss Potter. Better close your eyes and brace yourself. You might experience some nausea."


End file.
